Friday, July 29, 2011

Maybe Post 1 of Many for today :)

So...I'm slacking. I'll blame it on the summer, even though I sit at a computer all day long no matter what.  TJ is currently in PA for work for the next few weeks, my brother has been redoing the only bathroom at my parents house all week since they've been out of town, and its HOT.  Not only is it hot, its humid.  As in this chick isn't straightening her hair kind of humid.  On a happier note my brother proposed to his girlfriend and her two kids and they accepted.  We all couldn't be happier, they are perfect for each other.

On the house front.  Holy Batman these dudes are quick.  Like super-quick. I thought building a house took time, but leave it to these guys and you'll be moving in pronto. 

Here is a picture from EXACTLY one month from ground breaking.  I'm amazed.
We have a deck!
That picture obviously gives away a ton of the progress from my last post.  So here are some of the progress pictures of whats happened in the last two weeks.

7/18--Framing for main level is almost finished, a few closets needed to be framed in.

7/19--All the plywood is up and so are the trusses!

7/20--Plywood on the roof and grating the yard

7/21--Roofs ready for shingles.

7/22--House is wrapped and we have windows and doors!
What a story with these windows.  I was following a blog about a couple in Texas that just built their first home. The House That We Built is Henry and Shannon's experiences.  Well Shannon had a ton of issues with these windows in her bedroom. They were in the wrong place, wrong number, anything that could go wrong with these windows did.  I felt so bad for her.  Well we have this bay window.  Its beautiful, I love the view and the placement.  I can't wait to watch the snow fall and the lightning dance down the power lines.

So here's the issue.  We have our bay window, and the center window fits perfectly.  However the flanking windows are supposed to be 24" windows.  The holes are set for a 24" window. What size window was delivered? 18"...That just won't work folks.  I'm surprised I don't have a great picture of this window since they put the windows in but you can see the lack of window to the right of the center window.

So that's where everything was at at the end of last week.  This week has been all inside stuff,  but I'll post more about that later.  Here's a pic of the outside as it sat last weekend. It finally looks like a house that could be lived in!
A real roof! With Shingles and stuff!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Week Three: What a change!!

I've been slacking...I know :(  I have been out to the house site everyday during the week, so I have day by day progression :) So story by pictures.

I'm sure you recognize this picture of when we broke ground:
Hole-y Moley ! 6/25/2011
Basement Foundation--7/1/2011 
7/5/2011--Backfilling, waterproofing, little things but big importance
7/6/2011--Leveling ground to pour concrete
7/7/2011--Roof Trusses Delivered
7/12/2011--Concrete Poured!!
7/14/2011--Basement is framed in! (HUGE rain storm on 7/13)
And 7/15/2011--We have a subfloor for the main level!
As you can see in the span of 3 weeks  A LOT has happened.  We have also had some really nasty summer storms but I've seen progress almost daily. Around 7/10 we had the rest of the lumber delivered.

It's really awesome to be able to walk through and be able to see the bathroom, and closet, and stairs.  It really now looks like a house :)

We have our kitchen appliance allowance from the builder so we are starting to decide on what appliances we are going to go with so that when we can we can go on a buying spree! Just waiting to hear how much the allowance is on washer/dryer and if we can swap tank hot water heater for tankless.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Interior Picks

 I got back from Columbus late on Thursday and had a meeting with my wonderful Real Estate Agent and the builders wife on Friday morning.  We went through all of the carpet, tile, marble tops, counter tops, wood flooring, and paint that I could imagine.  So after an hour of going back and forth on this tile vs that tile, decisions were made.

Marble tops for bathrooms
Ceramic Tile--The white line was chalk, not included :) Going in all bathrooms, kitchen, dining, laundry, and basement foyer.

Valspar Paint for all walls.

River Gemstone Countertops, its a Formica type countertop but solid surface.

The whole deal, carpet is in upper corner and is Honey Graham.

The top wood is the one we are going with, believe it was called Gunstock.
Its all basic and sorta greige, but I did it on purpose.  I wanted all of the flooring and everything to go well together and with as many color schemes as possible.  The walls will be painted flat valspar paint.  I think we will repaint a few walls right away before we move in, and I want to do stripes in the bedroom.  Not the stripes that are in your mind.  I want to get a few gallons of semi-gloss in the same hopsack color and paint wide stripes on the walls.  They will be the same color but a different finish.

My brothers girlfriend has already admitted that she loves to paint and will help paint before we move in.  I'm thinking about painting the living room/dining room/kitchen combo first.  I already picked up the shower curtains for the basement shower and hall shower, so I need to decide if I want to paint the walls in those rooms or leave it for now. 

Enjoy I'm sure I'll have an update later in the week.

Day 1 to 8 What a week!!

I had a voicemail last Friday (June 24) from my mom telling me I had my very own pile of dirt.  Being the literal one I assumed that they had a load of dirt delivered to try to back fill and even things out.  I didn't put one and one together that the pile of dirt came out of my very own hole in the ground.

I didn't get off work until a little late on Friday, so on Saturday after running a million errands I finally made it out there.  We have a driveway, a hole in the ground, and a pile of dirt!
Its hard to tell, but its a hole!  We have a garage level basement, so we can drive in to our hole :)
The famous pile of dirt!


Driveway! Complete with car :)
Sunday morning I left for Columbus Ohio for the week.  I was attending the DLA Suppliers Conference, it was great! I met a ton of current customers, and prospective customers.  My feet hurt and I'm happy to be back in my temporary bed (aka the guest room at my parents). 

TJ drove past the house everyday on his way from home and sent me pics on Wednesday to show that they had put up the wall forms! Since I hate seeing cell phone pics on blogs, and since I didn't upload them to this computer...just imagine the hole picture with wall forms :)

I got home late on Thursday and it was too dark to see anything.  My plan was to drive out there Friday with TJ, I was being nice and waiting alllllll day (I took Friday off).  Well he stopped on the way home without me :(  We ended up driving out there Saturday to look around and take pictures.  So in a weeks time this is what happened:

Walls!!

Pipes!!

Another view of walls!
It's going so fast, all of this was done in one week!! I love it! Another post coming about all the interior picks that were made on Friday.